


A Father to His Men

by Arminius_Fiddywinks



Category: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TV 2012)
Genre: Family Feels, Family Fluff, Gen, No Plot/Plotless, Talking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-11
Updated: 2021-01-11
Packaged: 2021-03-15 11:08:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28687656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arminius_Fiddywinks/pseuds/Arminius_Fiddywinks
Summary: With no bad guys to pummel and a bitterly cold December to weather through, the Turtles keep to their lair, where Leonardo ponders on his family... and himself.
Kudos: 10





	A Father to His Men

Today was a quiet day. No major battles with crime, no sighting of the Foot or Kraang, no alien invasion. Just nothing. I didn’t really know what to do, and neither did my brothers, so they went off on their own diversions. Raphael was smacking around a punching bag, Donatello was in the lab working on… something, and Michelangelo was playing on the pinball machine. It was a terribly cold December day, and the heating was on the fritz. Donnie said he’d take care of it, but he said that back in November so I was dubious of his focus on the proper areas. We four were forced to wear heavier clothing in our lair: I had an old denim jacket with life-saving wool lining, Raph found a black leather jacket with a distinct deep red line crisscrossing the jacket’s upper chest area, Donnie just donned on one the heavy trench coats we’d usually wear for disguise up-top, and Mikey had a large orange hoodie.

Something was nagging me hard – the fight Mikey and I had during his rescue of his older brothers underneath Grand Central Station. The one where I almost killed him. I walked up to Mikey, who was slamming the buttons on the pinball machine, bright lights of every color splashing on his face and wild noises emanating from the game. I put my hand on his shoulder and greeted him, saying “Hey, Mike.”

“Oh, Leo!” said Mikey, not taking his eyes off of the machine. “What’s up dude?”

“Michelangelo…” I said. I’d never use my brothers’ full, actual names, unless I really needed their attention. Mikey stopped playing the machine, which powered down and made a sound of defeat when the ball rolled into the little hole at the bottom. He turned to me, a slightly concerned look on his face, and buried his hands in his hoodie’s pockets.

“You alright, bro?” he asked me. I let out a small breath.

“We gotta talk.”

“About… the thing?”

One thing about Mikey, he’s incredibly perceptive. I said “Yeah. The fight at Grand Central.”

Mikey nodded. “You… you got me good.”

“I did.”

A few moments of silence passed, and it looked as of Mikey was searching for what to say next. “Well, at least we both know you know your way around a sword,” He said jokingly. Mikey chuckled, but I was a little less amused.

“Mikey, I almost killed you,” I uttered breathlessly.

“But you didn’t,” he replied. “And that wasn’t you, that was Shredder messing with you. Pulling on your strings like one of those old-timey puppets, bro.”

More emotions welled up from within me. I couldn’t help myself. “I just-I-I,” I stammered. “I needed to be strong. I needed to be brave. And I wasn’t. And when we needed you we just set you up on guard duty with Casey, and when you came to rescue us we just jumped you. I couldn’t believe that we’d try to waste you like that but we did, and I didn’t have the strength, or the skills, or the courage to keep us all safe.”

Mikey cut me off by placing his hands on my shoulders, and he hugged me. “From what Master Splinter says,” he started, “real strength doesn’t come from just here.” With that, he moved back and placed his finger on my forehead. “Or here.” Then, his finger was placed on my chest. He withdrew his hands, and made a small circular motion with his index finger. “It also comes from everywhere. All around you. In others. In your family. The strength you draw from others only amplifies your own inner power, it feeds that power, enhances it. People can do almost anything for their family, you know.” That choked me up. Funny how things worked out in this instance: I wanted to talk to Mikey, but in reality _he_ was talking to _me_.

“It’s scary how insightful you can be at times, Mikey. Honestly.”

“Hey, underestimation is my special ability, brah. People see me as a cloudcookoolander, as retarded, as not all there, and then ooh-ahh wow!” He executed a variety of shadow moves against me, which caused me to flinch slightly and take a step back. “They get got, yo.”

“That they do, Mikey.”

“I know _you_ don’t see me as… you know… stupid.”

“No, you aren’t stupid, bro.”

“Yeah, yeah, I think I should know. ‘Cuz, you know… being treated as stupid when you aren’t – that’s just low. I mean, whoever’s dishing out the treatment may say ‘Oh it’s all just a joke, dude,’ or ‘Oh, it’s supposed to toughen you up.’ But jokes gotta end sometime, and, like, long-running jokes just aren’t funny anymore. And the ‘toughen up’ part, that’s just another neat little excuse to call someone names and put ‘em down just for being, like, whatever they are. Like, what?”

I didn’t say anything to Mikey at that particular moment, and just nodded. I didn’t want to, since there were times that I – and really the others – treated him… rather poorly. My pride – no, actually, my shame kept me silent. In hindsight, I get the feeling that Mikey knew. He knew every single moment of his mistreatment, and stealthily hinted to me then and there that he knew, and that he didn’t like it, but that he was beyond calling us out on our shit. He was beyond being affected by our pettiness towards him. He was above it all, and was rather disappointed that we were constantly putting him down, assaulting him with low-brow insults and roughhousing. He never told me this directly, to my face, probably because he didn’t want to hurt me, at least visibly. But his words impacted me more profoundly than any direct attack against me or his other brothers.

“So…” continued Mikey. “Back to that thing you wanted to talk about. It’s not your fault, Leo. Never was, never will be.” He hugged me, and I reciprocated the embrace. However, he breathed in sharply and jostled slightly as my hand moved to his side. “Ah, I’m still a bit sore there.”

“Oh, right. Sorry.”

“It’s ok, dude. Just… it’ll probably not get back to normal until the New Year. I mean, Donnie said you stabbed me so deep the point of your ninjato was like a few millimeters or something from piercing my heart, and it was right up against my left lung. That would’ve been a massive bummer, bro.”

“How… did it feel anyway, Mikey?” I asked. There were two reasons why I threw this question out there. One: according to Master Splinter, confronting a traumatic experience, examining it impartially, ruminating on its effects on the self, accepting that it happened, and refusing to let it consume oneself, were the only ways to overcome it. So, we all needed to talk about it so it won’t affect us anymore. Two, and maybe this is macabre – okay, definitely macabre: I was curious to see what it felt like from someone who lived through it. Getting stabbed, that is.

Mikey’s eyes went wide. He was there when Master Splinter told us of confronting trauma, but I get the feeling Mikey was more than a little apprehensive of reliving his near-death experience, and in all honesty I don’t blame him. But, he frowned slightly before he spoke. “It was weird,” he said. “First, I felt the pain. I mean, given, right? But the pain was just so horrible. Worse than anything I felt before. I don’t know what you saw, but I was crying. Literally crying, the pain was so bad.” Mikey stopped and shuddered, his head retracting slightly into his shell. “Next, I felt the blade punch through me, push inside me, and rub against my internals. I could _feel_ it get close to my lungs and heart.” He stopped again, and was breathing raggedly.

“Master Splinter said we gotta talk about this,” I said. Mikey nodded, looking away from me. He breathed in deeply, raised his head, and look straight back at me.

“Every single nerve in my body seemed to fire,” he continued. “Like, it was like the pain was everywhere at the same time. I could barely stand by the time you took out the blade, and the only feeling that could match how bad that felt was the feeling of the blood coming out of me. It was like I was leaking, because I was. I just grabbed my side hoping to stop it, and I felt so much worse.” Mikey, stopped again, shaking right in front of me while keeping eye contact. Every breath he took seemed to be a struggle: his body must be remembering the terrible experience as much as his mind was at that moment. He cleared his throat shakily, and coughed.

“I kept applying pressure, but my body screamed to let go because it was so painful. And I could still feel the blood leaking between my fingers. Then you sliced my chest open, and the pain got worse. Now I had to deal with it on my plastron too? And more blood leaking, great.” At that moment, Mikey began speaking in a sarcastic tone. I knew he was using humor to cope with the stress of just reliving the experience. “And to top it all off, after nearly choking you out, you stabbed me right here.” He pointed to the exact point on his body where I plunged a kaiken into him. My own brother, my own blood, and I tried to slaughter him like a lamb. He smiled with a slightly pained look in his eyes. “Oh man, now _that_ was a trip. The pain wasn’t as bad as like the side stab but it was pretty bad. I was lucky I managed to push the blade _just_ to the right, otherwise you’d slay me right then and there.”

“I faded in and out for… I dunno how long. When you guys shoved me into the Shellraiser I must’ve lost so much blood I blacked out, and didn’t wake up until two days later in Donnie’s lab. He was the first face I saw.” I nodded silently, extremely guilty that I just ran off and hid in my room instead of being beside my injured brother. I couldn’t bear to face my dark deeds, nor could I bear to confront Mikey in the shape he was, knowing that I made him that way, and that tore me apart inside. “Leo,” he said, gaining an incredibly soft demeanor. “None of that was your fault. I will never ever blame you for that day. Never. No need for apologies. Please know that. I’ll love you no matter what.”

I smiled, nodded, and a said “I love you too, Mikey.” Then, I turned my head to look at the pinball machine. What I saw horrified me: Mikey was close to beating my high score. My jaw dropped at the devastating revelation.

“Now that we really understand each other,” he said, patting me on the chest, “I think I should get back to establishing my dominion over the pinball machine.” I walked away, stunned by his pinball skills. My lordship over the machine was unshakable… until now.

After my illuminating talk with Mike, I went to the next brother, Donnie.

Donnie was listening to music, I could hear it blaring from his headphones. He was nodding his head back and forth to the beat. It was definitely a punk song. Well, Donnie did say he liked songs from nearly every genre. He didn’t notice me enter the lab, since I caught him singing probably the last verse of the song.

“Mind control the easiest way,” he sung. “Sponsored by the CIA! It’s a weapon you cannot see! It’s propaganda subliminally! They’re fucking with me, subliminally! They’re **fucking** with me, subliminally!!!” I walked up to Donnie, and tapped him on the shoulder, where after flinching in surprise, he took off his headphones and paused the song.

“Oh, hey Leo,” he said somewhat shyly, apparently embarrassed I caught him listening to punk rock. I walked to his side.

“Hey Donnie,” I said. “Watcha doin’?” Donnie turned back towards the table he was previously facing, his hands wearing special latex gloves custom-created for our three-fingered hands. A caterpillar was perched atop his left hand’s fingers, while some sort of drip or something like that – the thing where you pour little drops of liquid onto something – was in his right hand, squeezing small amounts of a clear liquid onto the insect.

“I’m dosing a caterpillar,” said Donnie, dripping some liquids onto a bug.

“Dosing?” I questioned. “As in LSD?”

“Well, it’s my own special blend.”

“I see.” I stood silent for a brief second, nodding my head once. “Hey, you know what just happened?”

“Hmm?” uttered Donnie curiously, turning his head back to me.

“Finding out that my brother’s giving drugs to bugs suddenly just became a normal occurrence to me.”

“It’s wonderful, isn’t it?”

At that time a cell phone vibrated on the table, making a distinct hum as the reverberation shook the whole piece of steel furnishing. Donnie quickly put down the drip thing and grabbed it, looking at the screen. This device was of a similar construction to the T-Phones he made for the team, although it had several differing design features, such as a larger screen, more buttons, and a strange wire or antenna attached to the side. I stole a glance of the screen, and it appeared to be some sort of internet chatroom or something.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Nothing, it’s nothing,” replied Donnie hurriedly. “Just some chat.”

“Chat with who? You didn’t tell them who we were or anything?” Immediately my voice filled with worry: our survival depended on as few people as possible knowing of our existence, and out of nowhere Donnie was just chatting with completely random people?

“Leo, these guys are 100% trustworthy. Trust me on this.”

My eyebrow was raised incredulously. “Donnie, are you absolutely sure?”

“Yes! I would trust these guys with _my life_. I think you would too.”

“Oh yeah? Who are they?”

Donnie shrunk from me slightly. “Uh… people we would know.”

“Who?”

He fell silent, staring at me with nervous eyes. A slight frown developed on my face, myself unsatisfied with a lack of an answer.

“Who, Donnie?” I asked.

He sighed, and said “Myself” in a low voice. Himself? What?

“I’m sorry, what?”

“I’ve been… talking to myself.”

My eyes widened, and I asked “Why? How?”

“My selves from other dimensions.”

“What…? How is that possible?”

“We all invented a form of interdimensional communication. Pretty nifty if I say so myself. You see, we used confiscated Kraang communicators, hacked their own communication wavelengths, utilized the same power converters the Kraang often used, and-“

“Actually, I don’t wanna know the ‘how’ part.”

“Oh. Alright then.”

“But I do wanna point out that this sorta thing is… well, it may be unhealthy.”

“Leo, I think I’d know if something was mentally unhealthy for me.”

“Really? Talking to alternate versions of yourself is perfectly fine for your mental health?”

“Basically they’re other people. Yes, they’re me, but they’re also not me. If that makes any sense.”

“It doesn’t Donnie, and by keeping yourself glued to that phone you’re shutting out the family you’ve already got. Don’t do that.”

I saw Donnie’s face contort between frustration, disappointment, and sullen acceptance. He sighed and put the phone on the table, its screen facing downwards.

“Gotcha,” he said.

“Look, they may be you, but they live their own lives. You should do that too. Don’t get caught up chatting with a screen, hoping for a response. You may be in the now, but you have to keep yourself _here_ , not there.” That last word came as I pointed to the device. Donnie nodded silently, looking up to me from his seat and smiling.

“I understand, Leo.”

I nodded.

“Hey,” I continued, “where’s Raph?”

“I think he’s in the dojo sparring with a punching bag,” answered Donnie as he turned to face his caterpillar and liquid hallucinogenic drugs.

“Alright, thanks.”

“No problem, Leo.”

I left Donnie to his experiments and made my way to the dojo, where indeed just as Donnie professed, my hot-headed brother Raphael was beating the living daylights out of a punching back.

“Hey,” I said aloud, enough for Raph to hear me. He stopped striking the bag, and turned to face me. I walked to him.

“Yo,” he said, crossing his arms together and leaning against the wall. He was panting slightly, a sign that he had been working on that bag for some time.

“How you holdin’ up?”

“Whaddya mean?”

“I mean, after all that happened these past few months.”

“Oh… all that shit. I’m good.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s good.”

Raph nodded at that comment. He was stone-faced, but I felt his visage turning into one of slight annoyance, perhaps mixed with moderate confusion. “So, what is it?” he asked.

“I just wanna talk,” I replied.

“Then talk,” demanded Raph.

“Alright, I will,” I snapped back. Raph frowned, but I shook my head, casting off what frustration I was feeling. “Raphael… I wanna talk about that thing. Where you went to the World Trade Center.” Raph sighed, looking away at me. His eyes darted all throughout the dojo, to the weapon racks, to the tree, to the floor. Really anywhere other than at me. He looked ashamed.

“I dunno what to say about it,” he mumbled, shrugging his shoulders.

“Why? Why’d you try and do something like that?”

Raph said nothing, staring at my feet. He frowned intensely, focusing on avoiding eye contact with me. I stood in the cold, awaiting an answer, and in that moment of frigid lucidity, I realized that I’d have to pry it from him, and I don’t like prying Raphael. Oh, no sir. And Raphael certainly doesn’t like it, I can assure you.

“Raph… why’d you try and jump?”

“I dunno,” he replied in a low voice, something I was able to hear but just barely. “I just… I guess I wasn’t very… welcome anymore.” He shuffled in place, raising his gaze to the tree, still avoiding me. “I mean… I feel like such a burden most times, and it’s like I can’t do anything except get angry and fucking punch people in the face and shit. I’m not smart like Donnie, I’m not talented like Mikey or you, and don’t even get me started on how shit a leader I am…” He blinked several times, his vision once again shifting wildly, along with his head, before he finally settled on staring me in the face at last.

“You think you’re useless?”

Raph shrugged as he once again looked away from me. It was almost as if he was going to start bawling his eyes out in front of me, but he fought back the tears fiercely, putting up a stone face. Once again, he returned to stare at me straight in the eyes.

“I’m just your number two,” Raph said dejectedly.

I paused, not replying for a second or two to find the right words. Then, those words appeared before me, filling up my mind like water filling up a cup.

“You’re strong, Raphael,” I said. “Stronger than Donnie, Mikey, and I combined. I’ve seen you do things, perform physical feats none of us could even hope to achieve. I’ve seen you shrug off explosions, sword blows, arrows, hell, even gunfire and lasers. And you’ve got a fierce determination about you: when you set your mind to something, you don’t quit. You don’t compromise. You don’t back down. When you’ve got a goal, you set your mind to it. You’re a powerful ninja, Raphael, even if you don’t think it. All you gotta do is believe in yourself, and you can do almost anything.”

Raph breathed in deeply, pushing himself away from the wall he was leaning against. He stood up straight, almost proud. He formed a resolute, almost defiant face. Then, he smiled ever so slightly and nodded.

“Thanks, man,” he said in a low voice. I replied with a silent nod and smile of my own.

I left Raph to his own affairs, mainly striking a punching bag. As I turned to leave the dojo, I ran into Master Splinter. His sudden appearance skipped a beat. He smiled softly at me, proud of me.

“And that is why I made you leader,” said my adoptive father.

I sighed and smiled back. Then, he disappeared. A spiritual projection of his. Even in death, he finds ways to surprise all of us, but especially me.

Later that day the four of us were seated around the dinner table, downing a pizza pie. It was one of Mikey’s creations, so it had some pretty wild stuff: maple syrup, cinnamon, hot sauce, parmesan cheese. Speaking of Mikey, he was messing around, shooting rubber bands at Donnie, who swatted them away with his hands. Raph meanwhile was rather reluctantly stuffing his face with the specialty pizza. He seemed heavily conflicted as to whether he should enjoy it or vomit it out. I didn’t mind Mikey’s creations, most of the time anyway. This one was one of the better ones, to be honest with you. As I took a long look at our family, I pondered over our new normal. With Master Splinter gone, I was the family’s sensei. I was the upholder of the Hamato legacy, of centuries of ninja training and teaching. I was the new keeper of ancient, powerful knowledge. It was on my shoulders that the burden of such awesome responsibility fell. There are moments where I’m not sure I can handle the pressure, but then I realize I can always lean on my brothers as much as they lean on me and each other. We’re in this together, for better or worse, and we’re a family. We will never be separated, no matter what. We will always have each other.

We are the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.


End file.
